Rajinder Pal, PEng

Rajinder Pal is a Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Waterloo, as well as a fellow of the Chemical Institute of Canada.

His research areas of interest lie in the rheology of dispersions, the flow of dispersions in pipelines and other process equipment, understanding the stability and demulsification of oil and water emulsions, studying column flotation, and measuring the flow of multi-phase fluids. The research area of stability and demulsification of crude oil emulsions is significant, as a large portion of the world’s crude oil is produced in the form of a water-in-oil emulsion. Professor Pal is working on novel methods for breaking the water-in-oil emulsions and is also continuing his research work on the separation of emulsified oil droplets from oily waste waters using a flotation column.

In addition to his research work, Professor Pal wrote three books and more than 150 refereed journal publications pertaining to his research areas of specialization. From 1992 to 2004, he served as Associate Editor of the Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering.

In recognition of Professor Pal’s distinguished contributions in chemical engineering before the age of 40, he received the Syncrude Canada Innovation Award in 1998 from the Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering. He also received the Teaching Excellence Award from the UWaterloo Faculty of Engineering twice (2001 and 2017), as well as the Outstanding Performance Award from UWaterloo in 2009. In 2020, he received the prestigious Distinguished Teacher Award from the University of Waterloo.

• Rheology of dispersed systems

• Flow of dispersions in pipelines and other process

• Phase inversion and stability of Pickering emulsions

• Column flotation

• Electromagnetic, mechanical, and transport properties of composite materials

• Separation processes

• Interfacial phenomena

• Colloids & porous Media

• Non-equilibrium thermodynamics

• Transport phenomena

• Drag reduction in turbulent flows

• 1987, Doctorate PhD, University of Waterloo, Canada

• 1981, Bachelor's BTech, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India

• CHE 200 - Equilibrium Stage Operations
  • Taught in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2025
• CHE 211 - Fluid Mechanics
  • Taught in 2023, 2024
• CHE 313 - Applications of Heat and Mass Transfer
  • Taught in 2022, 2025
• CHE 330 - Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics
  • Taught in 2020, 2025
• CHE 601 - Theory and Application of Transport Phenomena
  • Taught in 2023, 2024

* Only courses taught in the past 5 years are displayed.

• Yang, Jia; Pal, Rajinder, Investigation of surfactant-polymer interactions using rheology and surface tension measurements, Polymers, 1, 2020

• Pal, Rajinder, New generalized viscosity model for non-colloidal suspensions and emulsions, Fluids, 1, 2020

• Bains, Upinder and Pal, Rajinder, Rheology and catastrophic phase inversion of emulsions in the presence of starch nanoparticles, ChemEngineering, 1, 2020

• Ogunlaja, Silola; Pal, Rajinder, Sarikhani, K., Effects of starch nanoparticles on phase inversion of Pickering emulsions, Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering, 1089, 2018

• Pal, Rajinder, Influence of Droplet Size on Exergy Destruction in Flow of Concentrated Non-Newtonian Emulsions, Energies, 1, 2016

• Pal, Rajinder, Introduction to Analysis and Design of Equilibrium Staged Separation Processes (Second Edition), ISBN 9781922617316, 2022, Central West Publishing, 536 pages

• Pal, Rajinder, Thermodynamics and Exergy Analysis for Engineers, ISBN 978-1922617255, 2022, Central West Publishing, 672 pages